Love in the Time of Covid-19

JMJ✙

Dear Fathers in Christ –

Some diocese are canceling public services. Some are not. No matter where you fall on the spectrum between APOCALYPSE and TOO MUCH HYPE there is something you can do to help us all: especially the folks in the places with no Masses.

Put your Mass live on Facebook. Put your Mass live on YouTube. Do the same with your daily offices and any other devotions you offer. You can do this today, now, if you have a Facebook Page for your parish and a laptop with a camera built in. Follow these steps (I’ve marked the suggestions in italics the other steps have to be done.)

Set up for Mass. (If you’re in “isolation mode” you’re probably going to want at least a server/lector with you – even a brother priest. Cantoring optional.)

The Laptop needs to be somewhere the camera can “see” all the action at Mass. To be honest, you don’t need the full shebang for this. Put the laptop on your clean desk, spread a corporal and you’re off. But you can do this at a full altar as long as the camera can see everything. You don’t want to be moving the camera during Mass.

Open the laptop and log in to FB. You’re going to want to have the laptop plugged inbecause you don’t want it to die during Mass.

Make sure you and the reader (if any) are able to easily get into the line of sight. You’ll be preaching & reading from the same place.

Go to your parish’s page (If you don’t have a page you should really fix that…). I would suggest adding links to the readings of the day and – if you feel like it – to any hymn texts you may want everyone to use. Keep it simple though!

Click on live like in the image at the top of this post. Then you’ll go to a new page.

When FB asks you to approve the use of your camera and audio say yes or there will be all kinds of problems! You’ll see your camera image appear.

Make sure everything looks ok.

Pick where this post will appear: it should be on your Parish’s Facebook page.

Skip everything in this box unless you know what’s going on. It should be set correctly.

A title: Mass, Vespers, etc.

Click this when you’re ready!

I will help you if you’re having trouble. DM me on FB, or ping me on Twitter. Leave a comment here with a way I can get back to you online first (not via phone call until we’re both on board). With 25 years of customer and tech support, I can walk you through this! I will happily be tech support for getting your Mass online in this simple way. (There are more complex ways to do this, networked cameras, blue tooth mics… I’m not able to help with those: you’ll need someone with other skills.)

YouTube works really well, too, but accounts have to be approved to do livestreaming on YouTube: if you’re not approved this may not be the right time to go through that. If you are already approved then you know all about this. Never the less, I’ll do another post about that option later. Facebook is literally click-and-go for this.

This could work for Mass, the Daily Office, in fact for any possible set of devotions. I would advise having pictures for the Stations or Rosary. Your mileage may vary.

Although this may or may not work well for your parish (you know your people) once it’s on the internet, you’re available to anyone who has access to the internet and Facebook or YouTube. People who are panicking or stressed out because of the world situation can find your Mass and be comforted.

I would love it if there were masses everywhere all day on Facebook, and if the Daily Office were being offered all over the place.

If the Daily Office is a thing: you may want to consider setting up a Zoom account. I’ll do a post about that as well. The advantage of a Zoom (instead of FB or YT) is that your Zoom can be interactive: other folks can pray along and all participants would be able to hear and interact.

2 thoughts on “Love in the Time of Covid-19”

Dear Huw,
Are you not doing Vespers on Saturdays and Sundays 6:15 pm?
Maybe you are right now at 5:30 pm Vigil Mass
at St. Dominic’s. Let me know how that went with changes in attendance, music, social distancing etc.
Ray and I are going to attend for the first time 0730 tomorrow.
God Bless,
Anne

Hi! Not on Saturday yet. It was less than 50 tonight at Church: it felt nearly like a 1:1 ratio for EMs to Congregation.
I will be doing Vespers on Sunday – Friday unless public Masses are suspended then I shall do daily Morning and Evening Prayer streaming. The exception would if the Friars start to stream their office, then I think we should all join with them. But we shall see.

Doxos is the blog of a Roman Catholic Christian working out his salvation in San Francisco, The California Republic.

He worships here and here. He’s trying to be a Dominican Tertiary. To read a “full profile” on of your host, mash here.

This blog contains a good number of things, sometimes religious, sometimes not. Please remember me in your prayers.

Seduxisti me Domine et seductus sum.

I who have written this story, or rather this fable, give no credence to the various incidents related in it. For some things in it are the deceptions of demons, other poetic figments; some are probable, others improbable; while still others are intended for the delectation of foolish men.
(Closing lines of the Táin Bó Cúalnge)